Population Control Policy Issues

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Lucio de Souza Coelho
wrote:
> On Thursday 02 October 2003 13:28, avatar643 wrote:
> (...)
>> Can we discuss these seperately? Would you accept or
>> advocate a government controlling its population size through
>> establishing a system of financial rewards and disincentives?
>> How effective do you forsee such a plan being? Are there any
>> possible loopholes or potential abuses that you could forsee?
>
> As I said before, there *are* already governments doing this
> financial reward/punishment thing to encourage population growth.
> Italian government for instance. Interestingly, there are also
> *companies* doing that too - a company in Japan awards a prize of
> $10K per child to the employees that conceive more than two
> children. See http://www.overpopulation.org/older.html

I was aware of some sort of program in Singapore, where high
earning families are given incentives to have more children; but
didn't realize the Italian government also had an anti-low
population policy. The corporate case was entirely unexpected!

> I accept *and* advocate governments taking measures against both
> over and under population. Both carry a series of practical
> problems, and practical problems need practical solutions.
>
> However, in the underpopulation case, I don't know how efficient
> the incentives exemplified above are - I would advocate something
> more aggressive like paying *a salary* per each children. The paid
> family model... But then we have a resource allocation problem:
> governments dealing with underpopulation problems are usually cash
> -strapped because they have to sustain the elders; so, how to pay
> for new children?

Obviously, where the cost of having and raising a child is a
barrier or deterent to choosing to conceive, any incentive must
ofset that cost enough to lower or remove the barrier or deterence
factor. Considering the costs, US $10000 doesn't seem like much.
But on the bright side, just because you have the state paying
incentives (either once or continously per child) doesn't mean that
the state has to shoulder the whole cost of the child - and if the
incentives are given as tax credits, then you remove the burden of
actually collecting and redistibuting the incentive money. Tax
credits will still cost you money, of course, in the form of lost
revenue.... But I'd like to submit that paying for the elderly
doesn't have to be a major expense for the government - if you scrap
pay-as-you-go pension schemes, and replace them with individually
funded (maybe with a modest matching plan from the government, and
certainly tax free until final withdrawal) retirement accounts,
almost the entirity of this expense can be shifted from the
government. I think this was put forward as a solution to the
currently exhaustively expensive pay-as-you-go plans in use around
the world in a recent link to the economist newspaper in this thread.

>
>> In the case of the corporate habitat - would such a habitat be
>> subject to any governmental laws, or could the corporation rule by
>> fiat? If the companies - and their habitats - are answerable to
>> (for example) the laws of the country they are incorporated in,
>> then how do you ensure compliance?
> (...)
>
> Ah, this issue is a wasp nest (as we say in Brazil). Even muddier
> than the population control thing... Well, assuming that the High
> Frontier will be boosted by private companies rather than
> governments (and I do believe in that assumption) then much likely
> the companies will have the will *and* the power to enforce laws
> in their colonies. "Base countries" would likely be non-existant,
> because big companies are becoming increasingly transnational and
> at some time perhaps they will be *meta*national. However, that
> does not mean that they can do anything that they want, because:
> if they do something that is too unpopular (for instance, mass
> -killing employees that committed some "crime") then people
> elsewhere will buy less from that company. A question of public
> image.

Well, even todays biggest transnational companies are
constrained by the laws of their base countries, and they must all
have base countries by the simple fact that there isn't much
territory on Terra which is not controlled by a national government
of some sort. If the habitats are built and maintained (hardly a
given, but possible) by Terran governments, then this pattern is
continued.
If the first two (or several) habitats are 'national' habitats
and any possibility of conflict exists, then perhaps corporate
habitats are unlikely - because one of the functions of a government
is to maintain armed forces to protect it's territory. A corporate
habitat - to avoid the risk of being seized by one national force or
other as a first step in any conflict - would have to undertake the
(potentially) very expensive step of training and equipping (and,
almost by definition, unprofitable) military forces. If the
corporation wants to save this expense (and maybe other
infrastructure expenses, like fire departments and police) they
could simply agree to accept the soveriegnty of a national power in
any new habitat - in exchange for the national power running all the
essential services and military. The corp could then get on with
the business of turning a profit without these expenses and
complications.
Of course, if the first few habitats are commercial, then who
knows?

>
> Lucio

Joe.